


Couches and Curtains and Corridors

by SeverinadeStrango



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Mulciber's first name is Milton, Relationship Development, friends to lovers to strangers, unhealthy thought process
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 18:59:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15669297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeverinadeStrango/pseuds/SeverinadeStrango
Summary: "He wanted Mulciber too."





	Couches and Curtains and Corridors

**I**

When Severus was little, Mam had always told him that one day Hogwarts would be his home, just like it had been hers for those seven years. She’d only ever seemed to smile when thinking of those seven years. Severus had never seen her smile otherwise. She didn’t smile when Da came home. She didn’t smile when it was late and all the bedroom doors were closed.

Severus had always wanted to see the one place that made Mam smile, and then he was there, sliding off the stool and being ushered towards the table on the far right where an arm was thrown around his shoulder before he even sat down and there was someone across from him shaking his hand like they wanted to and they were saying that their name was Milton, Milton Mulciber.

Severus looked up and he smiled too.

**II**

His threadbare socks did nothing to protect his feet from the cold, so Severus had tucked his legs underneath him, book open in his lap until his legs had long since gone numb, and perhaps he would have remained like that until the not-awareness spread up and up and swallowed him whole if Milton hadn’t sat down with a great big _fwomp_ right next to him, shaking him and driving a thousand little needles into his skin that skittered and then left.

It was half-past two in the morning and any sane person would have been bothered, but Milton was asking for his help. It was his third draft and he couldn’t understand where he’d gone wrong – was that _not_ the correct order of the ingredients? The book had certainly said so. Asking and not demanding.

They stayed up all night. Severus didn’t mind.

**III**

The first time Severus had ever kissed someone it was with ink stains on his fingers and surrounded by books, by loose papers scrawled over with lines and lines of scratched-out writing and his hair was matted and oily and he was utterly ungraceful in it. He’d knocked his nose against Milton’s and then learned that it was easier when he tilted his head a little to the left. It was experimental. Scientific. Exploratory, they both agreed, that was all, there was nothing more to it.

Five minutes later they were working on their essays again. 

**IV**

Severus had ended up on his back that time, his face flushed and hot. Milton’s hands were on his wrists. He wasn’t afraid. There were no essays due tomorrow, not with exams being just around the corner – even the teachers had stressed the importance of studying over mere busy-work and now Milton was sitting up with an expression that looked like he’d just been punched in the gut.

He had to go to bed and Severus agreed even though he hoped, secretly, that he would stay. Milton stood, just as he said he would, and slipped out through the curtains, padding quietly across the dorm to his own. Severus watched the bed-curtains sway to a gentle stop as if there was some comfort to be had in the rhythm of the gentle slowing.

Severus stayed up all night. Milton, on the other side of the room, snored loudly away.

**V**

The thirty-first of March, nineteen – _Muffliato_ – seventy eight.

The bed-curtains were swaying again just like they usually did but this time they did not slow and they did not stop and Severus did not know that it was supposed to hurt that much. He noticed the tightness of Milton’s grip on his shoulder and briefly wondered how it was possible for a bruise to feel so safe.

The curtains stopped. Severus slept at last.

**VI**

He saw Milton again in Knockturn Alley, with a new haircut and an even newer tattoo that he didn’t let Severus touch. Was it because of his fingertips, stained yellow and purple from the ingredients that he handled every day? That’s what an apprentice does. Did he want to do something more? Perhaps, yes, but what else was there.

I’ll show you – the same words that he’d said on March-Thirty-First-Nineteen-Seventy-Eight – and extended a single hand. Milton’s eyes were dull now and it made Severus uneasy, but he took it all the same.

**VII**

When Mulciber-not-Milton fucked him in the second bedroom down the corridor, Severus was “Snape.” It hurt still and he wondered why, after all this time.

It’s supposed to hurt. Wrists pressed against the mattress or bared and presented to the Dark Lord. It’s supposed to hurt. Purple bitten into his throat and black seared into his skin, all alike, all the same – Severus wasn’t afraid anymore. He knew it was supposed to hurt.

When they were alone Mulciber didn’t look him in the eyes anymore.

**VIII**

It was half-past two in the morning. Snape was sitting on the little couch at the foot of the guest bed, legs numb to the knees and folded, bent like a bow. He watched the door, unblinkingly, for any sign of movement. The door stayed shut. The numbness spread.

He let it.


End file.
